Once and Always

  She raised an eyebrow at the unsubtle change of subject. “I’m getting there, Dyadya. I’m planning on a professionally designed website by summer and then I’ll be able to set up mail order.”

  He frowned as if he were about to continue his line of questioning, and she hastily added, “I brought up Butch to do some work this weekend.” She patted the small hard-sided case she’d placed beside her on the love seat. Inside was her favorite portable sewing machine, affectionately nicknamed “Butch” since the moment her mother had paid $2.50 for it at a yard sale.

  “I do not understand why you needed four years of college for this.” Dyadya pushed his lips out. In Russia, seamstresses had been ill-paid laborers, and Maisa had had trouble convincing him there was a difference between a seamstress and a dress designer who hand-made her creations. Probably it didn’t help that she was still working hard to break into the business of made-to-order dresses. “But it is good you like your work.”

  “You’d prefer I went into the family business?” She gave him an ironic look as she rose.

  “No. Do not jest over such a thing.” He shook his head slowly like a lugubrious basset hound. “It is very well you never followed my path, as you yourself know.”

  “I suppose,” she conceded, just to get him off the subject. “Here, let me show you what I brought.”

  Dyadya leaned forward in his recliner as she set the black roll-aboard at his feet. There’d been a sale at Macy’s just last week, and when she’d seen the thick wool cardigans she’d thought of Dyadya. He was always complaining that he couldn’t find warm enough sweaters for winter.

  Maisa unzipped the lid of the suitcase and opened it with a flourish.

  But when she looked down, instead of seeing a hand-knit Irish fisherman’s sweater, she found a tangle of strange clothes.

  “What—?” She wrinkled her nose as she lifted out an enormous pair of white men’s briefs. They were high-waisted and had a hole near the waistband. “This isn’t mine.”

  “And I think this, too, is not yours,” Dyadya said quietly. He picked up a ziplock bag from the suitcase.

  Maisa squinted at it. There were small pink sparkly things in the bag. “Costume crystals?”

  Dyadya brought the bag close to his face and peered at the pink stones. They were in the shapes of little hearts. “Costume. This means fake, yes?”

  “Yeah.”

  Maisa watched, bewildered, as her uncle got up abruptly and went into the kitchen. She heard drawers being pulled open and the sound of rummaging and then Dyadya returned with a jeweler’s loupe in one hand and the ziplock bag in the other.

  He sat down again and opened the bag, taking out one of the pink gems.

  Maisa sat forward. “What—?”

  “Hush,” he murmured and screwed the loupe into his right eye. Behind Dyadya’s recliner was a floor lamp with a swivel head. Dyadya pulled the light close, turned it on, and held the gem between thumb and forefinger, squinting.

  He put down the first gem and chose another, peering at it.

  By the fifth gem Maisa had lost all patience. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or do I just have to sit here and guess?”

  “Patience, my Masha,” Dyadya said calmly as he selected another stone.

  “Dyadya!”

  He looked up at that, sighed, and took off the loupe. “They are most certainly not costume, these.”

  She looked between his worried face and the little bag of pink jewels. “Not costume. Then you’re saying they’re—”

  “—diamonds,” Dyadya said succinctly. “Perfectly matched pink diamonds of a clarity and color as I have never seen before. These diamonds came from the same mine, I think. And what is more, they have been carved into the shape of a heart, each one.” He shook his head, absently picking up a stone to fondle it. “Such a method is extremely wasteful of the stone, thus making it extremely expensive.”

  “But if they’re diamonds…” Maisa blinked, still not completely believing. “Then they must be worth—”

  “—millions of dollars,” Dyadya said. “I am guessing, but maybe three million.”

  “Three. Million. Dollars?” Maisa squeaked.

  “Da.” Dyadya nodded thoughtfully. “Someone, I think, is missing this suitcase very badly right now.”

  Chapter Four

  Karl Karlson looked up at the Coot Lake Inn sign. It was the kind that had press-on black letters, some of which had fallen, so the sign read:

  OOT LA E I

  ee cable & a/ !

  Probably the lack of “c” wasn’t bothering any potential customers, seeing as it was about seven below at the moment. He slammed the door to his extended-cab pickup and hefted his black suitcase, thumping the back of the truck as he passed. A chorus of cheerful barking answered the thump.

  Karl smiled as he opened the door to the tiny Coot Lake Inn lobby.

  Norm Blomgren, the Coot Lake Inn proprietor, did not.

  “No,” Norm shouted when he looked up and saw Karl. Norm was a hefty guy, and his shout was kind of forceful, so he staggered back a bit behind the laminate check-in counter, his belly jiggling and his face drawn into an expression that, if Karl didn’t know better, he’d mistake for dismay.

  Luckily Karl did know better. “Hey, Norm. Long time no see.”

  He took off his fogged glasses and wiped them on the front of his shirt.

  “Not long enough,” Norm muttered, because he was a joker, that Norm.

  “Say,” Karl said, casual-like, as he dropped his suitcase by his feet and leaned on the counter. “You don’t happen—”

  “No.”

  “—to have a room for—”

  “No!”

  “—maybe a night or two?”

  Norm narrowed his eyes, which, what with his heavy, red cheeks, wasn’t such a good look for him. He kind of resembled a horrified hog catching his first sight of the slaughterhouse. Karl didn’t tell Norm that, of course, because Karl was a kind person and a good friend besides.

  He did crinkle his brow a little to let Norm know that he was kinda taken aback by the proceedings thus far. “Hey, how’s the tile in those bathrooms I fixed up for you? They sure looked good when I finished, didn’t they?”

  “That was last summer,” Norm said, jutting his chin out. Now he looked like a hostile horrified hog. “And I paid you for that work. And let you stay here on the house while you did it. And you mooched off my kitchen!”

  Well, that just hurt. Karl let Norm know this because communication was important in any relationship, even between bros. He’d read that in a Cosmo in the checkout line at Mack’s Speedy, right under the article about “5 Moves Your Man Will Never Expect,” which had been quite illuminating. “Hey, that hurts, Norm. I shared my chili—”

  “God-awful farting—”

  “—every night while—”

  “Stole those tomatoes—”

  “—I was working on those baths—”

  “—right out of my garden—”

  “—and it was tasty, too.” Karl finished triumphantly, because he was on pretty firm ground here. No one made chili as good as his. “Hey, I could cook for you again while I’m here. You still got that half a pig you bought from Al? ’Cause I make an awesome pulled pork. Secret recipe handed down from my great-grandfather.”

  Norm looked suspicious. “Your great-grandfather made pulled pork on the reservation?”

  Karl drew himself up. “Pulled pork is a proud Ojibwa tradition. We taught it to you white folk, you know.”

  “That’s what you said about hacky sack when we played it in junior high.”

  “My great-great-grandfather’s hacky sack ball,” Karl began patiently, because sometimes Norm didn’t understand the finer points of Ojibwa history.

  The office door blowing open interrupted him.

  Sam West strolled in, stomping snow from his Sorels. He had an older guy with him, sort of short and tubby with a nervous, unhealthy face behind crooked glasses.
Sam held a black suitcase in one hand. He had the other on the guy’s elbow. It was just resting there, but Karl knew Sam’s grip was strong due to a misunderstanding some years back involving a sweet yellow Corvette, a case of Budweiser, and three live ducks. Doubtful if Tubby Guy could break away.

  Not that he was trying. No, he was staring around Norm’s little check-in office like he expected killer ninjas to jump out from behind Norm’s one fake potted plant.

  “Norm,” Sam said, putting down the suitcase. He took off his hat, hitting it against his jeans to knock the snow off it, and jerked his chin at Karl. “Hey, Karl.”

  “Hey, Sam.” Karl carefully did not look down at his own black suitcase. Nope. He’d learned that kind of tell could send an eagle-eyed lawman like Sam into an investigative frenzy, which might be very awkward given the contents of said suitcase. Instead, Karl settled in more comfortably at the counter. This looked like it might be interesting, and it wasn’t like his conversation with Norm had been headed in a positive direction. “Who’s this?”

  Sam smiled slow and amicable, but Karl knew that smile and knew Sam wasn’t completely relaxed in the stranger’s presence. “This is Ilya Kasyanov, who just went into a snow bank up on Highway 52.”

  “Oh, man.” Karl shook his head in sympathy. “I’ve done that before.”

  “And not even in winter,” Sam drawled.

  Karl ignored that. “Ilya? Hey, are you Russian? ’Cause—”

  But at that point Sam tripped over his own feet or something and drove his elbow into Karl’s side, knocking over the two suitcases in the process.

  “Oof,” said Karl, wondering if he still had intact ribs. “What—?”

  Sam gave him a glare so scary that Karl immediately got the point: Ixnay on the Ussianray.

  “Sorry,” Sam said, not looking sorry at all. He righted the suitcases, and then turned to Norm. “Do you have a room for Ilya here tonight?”

  Norm brightened. Fact was, even though the Coot Lake Inn was the only motel in town, it didn’t do a whole lot of business, despite Karl’s awesome improvements to the bathrooms in numbers 21, 23, 25, and 9.

  “Yup,” Norm said, busily setting out the paper registration form and a pen. “Got a nice one out front. Has a bathroom just renovated, too.”

  “Purple and black tile,” Karl put in to help. “Custom work.”

  “Okay, yeah,” Ilya said, and there was a faint but pretty distinct Russian accent there, if Karl knew his non–Coot Lake, non-Ojibwa reservation accents. And he did. “I’ll take the room.” He pronounced room as “rhoooom,” like he was gargling a bunch of extra consonants and vowels at the back of his throat. “But only for one night, yes? I leave in morning, quick.”

  Sam lifted an eyebrow, which was kind of a neat trick that Karl had once spent an entire afternoon trying to do in a mirror, sadly without success. “Blizzard’s only going to get worse. Might think about staying a couple of days.”

  Kasyanov looked alarmed, his sad-dog eyes widening. “But… but my car must be fixed. I pay well.”

  “Sure, you can pay well and your car might be fixed,” Sam said easily, “but that doesn’t guarantee you’ll be able to drive on two feet of snow.”

  “Heard it was going to be three,” Karl put in.

  Norm scoffed. “Two and a half max. It never gets to three no matter how much the weather guy on four jumps around.” He turned to the Russian. “We got cable, though, and Marie at the Laughing Loon Café will deliver if you order over twenty bucks of food. You’ll be fine for three or four days.”

  Kasyanov had been swinging his head back and forth like a cat following a feather toy. Now he made a dying whale sound. “Days?”

  Sam looked at him, squinting a little. “Yeah. You got some place to go?”

  See, the way Karl figured it, everyone has a place to go, so he was slightly surprised when the guy rolled over and started backpedaling. “No… ah, no. I am fine here in Loon Lake.” He smiled, showing yellowed teeth. The smile was totally unconvincing and kind of gross to boot.

  “Coot Lake,” Norm corrected, but not meanly, because after all the guy, yellow teeth or not, was a paying customer. “Here.” He pushed the registration form at Kasyanov.

  Ilya sighed and picked up the pen.

  Sam turned to Karl. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Well, Norm’s helping me out with a place to stay—”

  “Am not,” Norm muttered, but then got distracted by Kasyanov filling out his form.

  “Something wrong with your trailer?” Sam asked.

  “You could say that.” Karl had a real nice mobile home up on the Red Earth Ojibwa Reservation. Only forty years old with almost real wood paneling in the den/living room/dining room/office. “Water pipes froze.”

  Norm looked up just then, and with a heavy sigh reached for a room key and shoved it across the counter with a grunt. Karl nodded and took it.

  Sam winced. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah,” Karl said. “But what with the meeting of the Crow County Mighty Mushers this weekend, it’s just as well. I can be in town with—”

  “Wait. Wait.” Sam held up his hand in a stop sign. Sometimes Sam had trouble coming out of his cop man mode. “Your crazy musher friends are arriving in town?”

  “Sure.” Karl had been trying to get Sam into the dogsledding club for years. “You could come by and check it out. We’re going to sled around Moosehead Lake, have a few brewskis, and then maybe do a loop up by County M before coming back into town.”

  “How many?”

  “Miles?” Karl blew out a breath, estimating. “Oh, at least fifty. But the way the snow’s coming down—”

  “No, not miles. Mushers.”

  “Uh.” Karl shrugged. “Well, normally we’d have at least twenty, twenty-five people, but with this weather? Maybe fifteen or so all told. Depends on whether Doug Engelstad has recovered from those two broken legs, I guess. And his cousin, Stu Engelstad, was threatening to move to Alaska ’cause he says it’s too warm here—”

  The Russian choked a bit for no reason that Karl could see.

  “Which I can totally get, but really, there aren’t many girls in Alaska, so I wouldn’t myself. Not”—Karl interrupted himself thoughtfully—“that Stu seems that interested in girls. Or guys. Or, really, humans—”

  “Karl.” Sam had a real even voice, usually, but sometimes when he was a might cranky it came out sharplike. “Does Doc Meijers know about your meet?”

  Karl’s forehead crinkled, confused. “No. Why would he?”

  “So maybe you could get a permit from the police chief to invite fifteen drunken mushers and all their dogs to town and then chase them around Moosehead Lake?” Sam said, his tone kind of getting loud at the end.

  “Oh, hey,” Karl said. “Do we need a permit for that?”

  “How much?” the Russian yelped at the same time.

  Karl was sympathetic. Sometimes Norm had a tendency to gouge. He was the only motel in town.

  Sam turned to the counter and Karl bent quickly to grab his suitcase. He picked it up and then hesitated. Both suitcases were black; both looked exactly alike. Was it…?

  He glanced up to find Sam staring at him. “Something the matter, Karl?”

  “Nope. Nothing at all,” Karl grinned a grin of outstanding blandness and tightened his grip on his suitcase. “Imma just show myself out.”

  Sam narrowed his eyes, Karl was already hustling out the lobby door. He didn’t want to stick around to find out about dogsledding permits. And besides, Norm was busy enough without showing him to his room.

  Karl knew the way anyway.

  Chapter Five

  “How many dogs?” Doc Meijers barked.

  Six hours later Doc and Sam sat in Ed’s bar, a checkerboard on the table between them, Sam’s acorn-brown Resistol cowboy hat on the seat beside him. It was crowded tonight, despite the weather, and Sam had to lean forward across the battered wood table to be heard. “Well, figure fifteen mushers wi
th eight to ten dogs each…”

  He shrugged, sitting back in the booth. Doc could do the math well enough himself.

  The Coot Lake police chief was in his early sixties and had a bit of a paunch and the sort of well-weathered, scowling face that frightened everyone but very small children who hadn’t the brain cells to know any better yet. Little kids loved Doc Meijers.

  Doc muttered something, but the jukebox started up with Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” and his words were lost in the wave of feminine hostility.

  “Yup,” Sam replied because he was pretty sure he knew the gist of what Doc had said.

  Carrie complained about restroom cologne—which, as it happened, Ed made sure to keep in stock—and Sam drank Sam Adams and watched Doc bitch to himself as he captured two of Sam’s men.

  By the time the song had wound down, so had Doc.

  To a degree, anyway. “Goddamn fool, that Karlson,” he shouted into the sudden lull in sound.

  Fortunately, Ed’s was the kind of dive where no one looked up. Ed had taken the former VFW post—fake wood paneling and all—run a counter across the back, bought some secondhand tables and chairs, mounted a stuffed bobcat on the back wall, and called it a day. No one knew what the bobcat was for—wasn’t like there were any live ones locally. Sam had always figured the bobcat was Ed’s idea of decoration. Either that or he’d gotten it free.

  Ed’s was the only place open past eight on a Friday night in Coot Lake, so if you didn’t want to drive a ways—and who wanted to in a blizzard?—Ed’s was it. Right now there was a table of women of a certain age to the side of the room. Becky the dispatcher was one of the women. She’d recently got a new dye job that was an eye-popping purplish red, even in the bar’s dim lighting. When asked, everyone said it looked real good on her—especially when Becky gave them the squint-eye. The ladies were sharing a plate of Ed’s microwaved nachos and a pitcher of beer, and they looked scarier than anyone else in the room.

  That was saying something, because a bunch of big guys in plaid and Sorels were at a back booth—probably some of Karl’s musher friends. Tick, one of the two other Coot Lake policemen besides Sam, had returned from his aunt’s in Fergus. Tick had the night shift, though he was taking his dinner break right now. He was leaning his skinny ass on a stool at the bar, talking away to a bored-looking Ed as he ate his greasy burger-and-fries dinner. Tick had recently grown a soul patch below his bottom lip and seemed pretty proud of it, despite Doc muttering that it looked like a spider had died on his chin.